Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion What's New At Axiom Introducing the M5 and QS10

Love hearing the positive impressions of the M5HP OW speakers. Out of curiosity - when did you guys place the orders for your speakers?

I ordered 4 pairs (sides, backs, 4 atmos heights) on Jan. 18 & 19 but I haven't received any indication of when they will be shipped. I'm eagerly awaiting their arrival so I can complete my new home theater and really enjoy it. I've put a hundred hours on the new projector, but haven't been able to enjoy a full 3D immersive (Atmos) sounding movie without any surrounds :<

Received my QS10s yesterday set these beauties up right away, so far have one mounted and the other on a shelf with the old soup can trick.

Audessey sees them as 40Hz though it tends to see all my speakers as large.

Wow didn't realize how much info I was missing with only using monopole as surround in 7.1.

Also picked up a set of the F.M.B. to properly mount my M22 as front heights super happy with that decision wider and higher placement made big difference for me so far. Much larger sound stage.

Need more movies and tunes still. Only a few hours in so far,

I haven't seen any love for the in-walls. Are in-wall speakers unpopular or unfavorable?

From an install point of view

Its hard to get their locations perfect unless care is taken in the rough in process. This means pre locating seating, screen, and sub locations to account for room modes. Retrofitting in-walls into existing rooms usually means modifying studs to get the channel to agree with its reciprocal channel.

Then you are bound to their location from an acoustics/tuning standpoint. If there is something wrong with a location, like an obvious peak in response, you must use EQ to fix it. Moving the speaker isnt an easy option.

The huge positive is how clean the final install looks.

Thanks Serenity. There is only one spot for them in my small bedroom, so if there aren't any other drawbacks....

So that raises an interesting question...

I finally got the imaging "just right" on the M5HPs by playing a bit with separation and toe-in. For M5's fairly widely spaced the best setup seemed to be with speakers toed in about 2/3 of the way between "straight ahead" and "pointing at the listener".

I imagine there is no way to play with toe-in with in-wall / on-wall speakers, so is the idea that you just keep the separation small relative to viewing/listening distance enough that straight-ahead works well ?

That seems to be the way that most systems I see are set up anyways by virtue of typical room and TV size - with speaker separation maybe 1/2 of the viewing/listening distance. My speakers are set up in a pure muic system and are quite a bit further apart - a bit over 6 foot separation and ~9 foot distance from baseline to listener.

Cam, what kind of distance & separation were you thinking about ?

I agree with you Bridgeman (bet you dont hear that too often ) toe in is almost always necessary and i couldnt imagine not being able to toe my speakers. I find it helps by keeping sounds from reflecting off the boundary walls and improves imaging.

There's a first time for everything

I did a bit of experimenting last night, moving the speakers closer together to find out where the imaging "popped" without toe-in.

Turned out pretty well - moving each speaker in less than a foot was enough. So while 6-6.5 foot separation at 9-10 foot listening distance definitely required toe-in, moving the speakers in to ~4.5 foot separation at the same listening distance worked fine without toe-in.

Probably could have gone up to 5 feet and still been OK but I didn't test with enough different material to be sure. If I were cutting holes in walls I would go with something like (listening distance >= 2x separation).

My impression from seeing pictures & real world systems is that most people installing in-wall systems tend to do this anyways just because it looks right. This is also probably just a 2-channel issue anyways, since with 5.1 or similar you have a center channel filling the gap between mains.

I did move the speakers back to 6.5 foot separation with toe-in again after experimenting, since (a) that gave me a wider soundscape which seemed a bit more accurate eg. when listening to grand piano, and (b) the speaker interaction with the room seemed a tiny bit better as well.

While lying in bed, my head is 9 1/2 feet from the wall, and the spots where I was thinking of installing them (blue circles) are 12 1/2 feet apart.

I just had a custom built-in installed (shown at the right edge of the picture). Prior to that, my right channel Paradigm monitor 9 sat in the corner of the cubby that the built-in was framed into, which would be about two feet to the right of the blue circle. When I did major renovations and installed the French doors, we ran speaker wire from my Denon 3808, up and over the door frame, to the floor (basically right below the blue circle).

Thanks for the help.



http://i564.photobucket.com/albums/ss81/Quadcam99/2017-05-09%2019.15.59_zpsbtbibsfc.jpg

Thanks Cam. Agree that the blue circles seem like the only good place for the speakers. With that separation though I would be thinking really hard about toeing them in a bit.

The in-wall speakers are fully enclosed so it should be possible to make an angled frame that sticks out from the wall a bit (maybe 1.5-2") on the outside edges, with a cutout for the speaker that would allow use of the existing clamps, but it seems like a lot of work when it would be easier to get the same result with on-wall speakers instead.

For on-wall you would just need to mount the power bracket on an angled block (30 seconds work with a miter saw) but you would want the blocks to be supported by a wall stud rather than wallboard. I *think* there would be studs available where you want them but not sure. There is always the old trick of using a thin piece of plywood to bridge between where you want to mount and where the stud is.

I guess the main downside of toed-in on-walls is that the outside edges of the speakers would end up almost 6" away from the wall, which would be OK on the left but which might interfere with access via one of the doors on the right hand side. I *think* it would be OK (in which case a floor or hinge-mounted door stop would be all you need) but not 100% sure.